My first drone video

[bojans]

I just got a new drone last week and filmed a skier for the first time today. I have a lot to learn, the gimbal movement is jerky, I over-run the skier and with the small view finder it was difficult to get lined up with the course, but for anyone thinking of getting a drone to film skiing, this will give you an idea of what is possible with 5 previous flights under your belt on a sub $1,000 drone. I maintained a height of ~20' off the water. I am very happy with how it did following a 36mph skier.

 

[Ed_Johnson]

Really cool !!! Nice Lake and conditions. Where was that filmed at ??

[bojans]

Thanks Ed. The lake is in Northern Illinois near McHenry (50 miles north of Chicago), Clear Lake..

[DangerBoy]

Nice job @bojans! This is something I've wanted to do for a long time. What drone were you using and where were you controlling it from? Were you controlling it manually or using some sort of follow mode?

[VanessaCoverly]

wow, I'm happy that it hasn't fallen into the water!

[bojans]

@DangerBoy

It is a Mavic Air. I am controlling it from the dock only because I wasn’t confident in my ability to land it from the boat if the battery went low or something happened. While it does have follow me mode that only works to ~18mph. In order to go faster you have to turn on “sport” mode which turns off all of the obstacle avoidance features but does keep the GPS benefits of maintaining elevation and hovering in place even during high winds.

[Tom351]

That is some great manual follow flying considering how sensitive the controls are in sport mode!

 

If you want to do an automatic follow the app to use is Litchi instead of DJI-Go. In Litchi's follow mode the aircraft will follow the controller's GPS signal (much more reliable than optical tracking). You can disable obstacle avoidance and follow at about 33mph (+or- depending on wind). There are also settings to follow from any angle rear, side, even from front where you kind of "push" the drone with the boat). You can set a "subject offset" to make the drone point camera at skier instead of boat (if you are close and following from the side). Here is a sample of using Litchi follow: (the first part of the clip- some stationary shots in the middle- and at the end I had the gimbal aimed too far downward obviously)

That clip is at 32mph if I remember correctly.